The Doctor, the Teacup, and the Wardrobe
by Khatt
Summary: The Doctor is stuck at home while Rose Tyler is at work. HOW can he possibly amuse himself for an entire five hours? TenIIniverse!


The Doctor was definitely _not _bored. Boring was having to sleep eight hours a day. Boring was waiting for a bus to arrive when it wasn't even raining to keep your spirits up.

Boring was waiting for Rose Tyler to get home from work.

Alright. Bored, then.

He was stuck, in the house, _without_ Rose and he was supposed to be syncing his bright, shiny, new biological clock with everyone else's. Sleeping at night, awake during the day, eating at regular intervals. _It's no wonder humans take so long to get anything done_, he mused as he stacked teacups and saucers atop one another, _they've got a full schedule already_.

While he waited, he amused himself with whatever he could find in the house. It was a brilliant house, done up like the TARDIS. He did miss the nooks and crannies of his old room–the stacks of book, the stashes of tea his pillow that had taken _ages _(literally, ages) to wear in properly–but Rose had included some of the most remarkable things in the rest of the mock-up.

One particular item of fancy was the china collection. The TARDIS _did _have a china room, with zero-g shelving of course, to save itself from absolute devastation, but Rose hadn't replicated those particular sets. Rather, she'd found the same patterned collection in several different colors.

The Doctor's bare feet were chilled by the kitchen tile as he rummaged through the cabinets looking for different sorts of tea. He realized that he'd already finished most of his 'human checklist' for the day–the hygiene this species hadn't yet biologically done away with!–and Rose wasn't due home for another five hours. That wouldn't do at all.

Napping was a quick way to pass the time, but he wasn't allowed until this whole twenty-four hour cycle had been firmly established. _If you'd told me nine, no, nine **hundred** years before that my soon-to-be mother-in-law would be banning naptime, I'd've turned around and walked away without a word. _The Doctor gave a shrug. _Ok, it'd probably be because I've never had the occasion to nap before, but that's beside the point._

Where _was_ that almond tea? They'd had some last night right before bed (he'd spilled a bit on his Shakespeare), but Rose had fixed that particular cup. _Hmm. Not in the pantry, not on the shelf, not next to the kettle, not on top of the fridge_; in his old TARDIS, he'd always kept it in his room. Rose used to sneak in occasionally to steal herself enough leaves for a cup, so he always left it out where she could find it.

_Ahh_, he snapped his fingers, grinning, _my clever girl_! Running to the broom closet where his old room would have been, he yanked open the door with a flourish. Sure enough, there sat the tea on the top shelf in-between the dusting rags and the stack of Agatha Christie novels he used to keep by his bed.

He snatched the tin from the shelf, grabbed the copy of Murder on the Orient Express for good measure and nearly skipped back to the kitchen, whistling 'Polly, Put the Kettle On' as he did so.

_-Five Hours Later-_

Rose Tyler walked up to her front door and pulled out the TARDIS key she kept on a ball chain around her neck. She couldn't hear or smell anything out of the ordinary, which was a big step up from the day before. A small part of her wondered if the Doctor's manic behavior had _always _been caused by sleep deprivation, and if his supposed 'superior physiology' was instead his inner toddler refusing to go to bed.

When she opened the door, she sighed. Generally, she was _paid _to clean up alien-related catastrophes. She sat her work bag atop the long, brown coat that was draped over a nook in the nearest coral pillar and took off her shoes. Every item of clothing she owned was strewn about the floor, with evenly-spaced two-foot circles of clear floor leading like stepping stones to her wardrobe, which now stood in the center of the living room.

Rose hopped from one open space to another, trying not to dirty anything. "Doctor!" she called, after her third jump. She heard a slight creak; the wardrobe door had opened, and there he sat, on the wooden baseboards, sipping out of her best china. Strangest of all, he'd somehow managed to find and put on a pair of jeans and a t-shirt.

"Cup o' tea?" he asked politely.

"Is that my shirt? I lost that ages ago, where'd you find it?"

"In the TARDIS. The old one."

"Was it always that… masculine?"

"I made some modifications. D'you want it back?"

Rose shook her head. "No, no, it looks nice on you."

He winked.

She refused to be distracted. "So _why _are all my clothes out?" Rose asked, pointing around the room.

"I needed the wardrobe."

"Why," she asked, her voice going a bit high in anxiousness, "did you need the wardrobe?"

"I'm drinking tea, Rose."

"Right," she nodded, "of course, what was I thinking? Well, answer me this," She stepped into the last open space and sat on her heels right next to him. He whimpered once when she took his teacup and sipped at the hot liquid. "Ooh, the almond, my favorite. Tell me, Doctor, when I lived in _your_ house, did _I _leave laundry everywhere?"

"Yes, you did. On purpose, in fact. Little minx." He took the cup back and drank sycophantically.

"Yeah, well, maybe," she admitted, "but those were _my _clothes, that's completely different."

"Rose," the Doctor leaned forward, engaging her with a conspiratorial whisper, "_I don't have any clothes_. Just these and m'suit! So what was I supposed to use, eh?"

"_I _think you're bored."

"I'm drinking tea in a wardrobe, _how _can I be bored?"

"Come on, up you get," Rose said, hauling him up by the arm, "_You're_ going to clean this up while _I _have another cuppa."

"Oh, that reminds me, look!" He steered her to where she had a clear view of the kitchen table. On it was what she could only describe as a bar graph made of teacups. Some were stacked five high, teetering on their saucers, each cup with steam wafting from the surface of the fluids within.

"What's that?" Rose asked, politely as she could.

"Aromatic histogram," he announced proudly, thumbs thrust in the pockets of his jeans, "arranged by adenosine response time. And color-coded for your convenience, look!" He grabbed the topmost of the pink-detailed cups–her favorite–and handed it to her. The smell of almond tea, the warmth of the mug, and the touch of his hands on hers made her smile.

She wouldn't trade this for anything. No matter what sort of chaos she came home to, it was so many times better than the echoing emptiness of the past few years. "Come on, Aslan," she said, nudging him with an elbow, careful not to spill her tea. "Let's see what we can do about this mess."


End file.
